Tuesday, December 20, 2011

A break from Christmas Knitting....

A few weeks ago, I was looking desperately for a big chunky cowl. I searched high and low before I found one on Ravelry. Why hadn't I ever seen that one before? Was it new? I clicked the link. Ah. It was crochet.
Take a peek at it here. It's free and super cute.
Usually I filter my searches so I only look for knitting projects. But, I thought, why not? Surely I could crochet a cowl, right? I read through the pattern and decided that I could learn to work a double crochet decrease over 7 stitches if it meant I'd get a cowl like the one in the picture.

The only problem was I didn't have a 10 mm hook. That's a size P. The biggest size I had was a size J and I only had that because once I ordered a big lot of used knitting needles on Ebay and a little kit of crochet hooks came with it. So I had to trudge through Michaels (not my favorite thing this time of year) and came out with a huge plastic crochet hook for $3.99. This thing is the size of a size 15 knitting needle!!!

But you know what that means? That means I crocheted up the whole scarf in one day! Talk about instant gratification.

Astute crocheters among you will note that I did not get the pattern down until 2 rows in. (2 rows equaling about 2 inches.) The whole scarf is only 10 rows long. The pattern calls for a repeat of 4 rows, 3 times total. But I ran out of yarn and so only did 2 repeats plus half of the third repeat. It still turned out nice and cozy. Apparently I crochet really loosely though because it came out 10 inches longer than the one in the pattern. Which explains why I ran out of yarn....

That means that this project used up 630 yards of Caron Simply Soft in ONE DAY!!! Do you realize how cool that is????

Plus now I haz a scarf!!!

Picture party!!!

First try at a slip stitch seam.

so cozy

close-up of pattern

~~~~So classy~~~~~

Back to Christmas knitting today, though.
I have a few presents left to make:
1) Duckling (with feet not the rolly thing) for baby Layla. With a squeaker inside!!!
2) One more puppy for Layla's big sister.
3) Vyvyan's giraffe still isn't finished. I sewed the legs on yesterday, but he still needs 11 (!!) pom poms and a tail.
4) Emilio's Pony still needs 2 legs. Not to mention lots of seaming. (note to self: shame shame you're to blame!)

And if time permits,
My dad. Now I love my dad, I really do. But he is one of those people who NEVER tells you what he wants and doesn't appear to like anything in the world. So come Christmas time I'm always stumped. If I have time, I'm guessing I'll make him some slippers. Or somethin'.